Putting A Price Tag On Local Growth Developers Fear Impact Fees Would Put Damper On Building

December 9, 1985|By Jack Snyder of The Sentinel Staff

The highway impact fee proposed for new development in Orange County goes to a vote by county commissioners today with some developers predicting the measure will slow growth in the area. The consumer also is expected to get the bill for extra costs incurred by developers.

The measure has been hassled over for months and now appears to be in a form generally acceptable to businessmen and a majority of the county commission.

It's a plan that apparently still doesn't please many, despite months of negotiation and compromise.

Although the impact fees are significantly lower than when first proposed, developers contend that the charges will jack up the cost of everything from housing to products sold in shopping centers.

''There's no way you can absorb it,'' said Tom Shutts, president of Laurel Homes. ''You've got to pass it on. The consumer is going to pay.''

Shutts said the fees will make it tougher for people to buy homes.

The business community in general -- from developers to bankers -- banded together to fight the original ordinance.

As originally proposed, builders would have paid a road impact fee of $1,570.50 for each single-family house. In the proposed ordinance now being considered, the fee is $1,060.98. Other categories, including the originally proposed fee and the charge now being considered, are multifamily units, $958 and $647.20; hotel rooms, $1,649.03 and $1,129.13; 50,000-square-foot office buildings, $138,990 and $99,695; and 200,000-square-foot office buildings, $342,370 and $245,576.

Lowering the fees left proponents unhappy.

Orange County Commissioner Vera Carter said developers did a good job in looking out for their interests. The county commission is failing, however, in its obligation to make growth pay for itself, she added.

The impact fees now proposed won't come anywhere near generating the income needed for road improvements, Carter said.

But County Commissioner Hal Marston said he thinks that the ordinance now ''is fair and enforceable.''

Some developers said they think the county started with excessively high fees to get everyone's attention, then negotiated downward.

Not so, Marston said.

''I think the staff did a good job, '' he said. But, he added, he felt the original proposal needed refinement.

Even though lowered from the original ordinance, the proposed road impact fees are higher than other areas that have imposed such charges.

The fee for a single-family home in Hillsborough County, for example, is $400 to $700, $1,045 in Palm Beach County, $1,034 in Lee County and $298 in Lake County.

For an office smaller than 100,000 square feet, the levy would be $1.99 per square foot in Orange County. In Hillsborough County the charge is 52 cents to $1.15 per square foot. In Palm Beach County, the levy is 48 cents a square foot. In Lee County the charge is $1.22 a square foot and in Lake County, it's 27 cents per square foot.

Seminole County is the only other Central Florida county with a road impact fee. The county recently enacted a temporary fee of $500 per residential unit and various square footage charges for commercial property, and is working on a permanent ordinance to help raise road construction money.

Woody Price, deputy Seminole County administrator for county development, said the county probably will have a permanent road impact fee law on the books by next summer.

Meanwhile in Orange County, not many business people are happy with the ordinance despite the lowered fees, said Tom Tompkins, a developer and chairman of The Committee For Responsible Growth Management, a group of more than 130 business people who organized after Orange County unveiled its first impact fee proposal.

Home builders and developers were ''just one voice'' on the committee, Tompkins said. The group included such diverse groups as labor, architects and restaurant operators, he said.

Tompkins refused to say how much the committee raised. He said the group spent about $75,000 on everything from transportation experts to research to persuade the county to lower the fees.

Although the ordinance as it's proposed is still disliked by many, it's tremendously better than what was first proposed, Tompkins said.

John P. Wickert, vice president of Hardy/Lieb Development Corp., a shopping center developer, said the fees will slow development.

''The way land prices have gone, (the economic viability of) a lot of deals has been close,'' Wickert said. ''This will push some deals off the table. They just won't happen.''

The fee will force developers to look for opportunities in other areas not levying such a charge, he said.

Wickert said retail-space developers couldn't pass all the extra cost on to merchants in increased rents right away because the market is being charged about what it can bear now.

''In '82 this was a $9 to $10 (rental per square foot) market,'' Wickert said. ''Now it's a $12 to $13 market. It just doesn't jump up that fast.''